Right, a little history lesson here (just for LCD ) - back in the early 90's the cost of Group A rallying in the WRC was rising and the manufacturers were reducing due to their inability to sell the 25 000 models required for a model to get homologated into the WRC (only the Japanese manufacturers could sustain that sort of annual figure, which gave rise to the dominance of Toyota, Subaru and Mitsubishi). So the FIA decided that they would make the world championship for 2wd cars only from 1997 and in the meantime started a category called Formula 2 which catered for these cars and allowed manufacturers to gain experience. By 1997 the manufacturer interest was huge but the FIA had already decided to use the basic plan for Formula 2 but all people to add 4wd in order to make the current World Rally Car rules. Quite ironically Peugeot almost won WRC events in 1997 & 98 and Citroen actually managed to win 2 WRC events in 1999 before the FIA put in new rules to slow down these F2 machines on tarmac, and therefore signalled the death of the series as a mainstream category.

But it was 6 years of awesome sounding rally cars. The British championship in particular was brilliant in this era.